


Nothing Is Ever Lost

by gammacorvi



Series: Temporal Mechanics [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:03:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gammacorvi/pseuds/gammacorvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Admiral James T. Kirk is looking for his Spock. But is he even searching in the right universe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Is Ever Lost

Sometimes Spock wonders if, after almost a century, he shouldn't have, by now, stopped grieving. He drags himself home in the lengthening shadows of the evening, feeling every one of his 168 years. He never expected it to be like this. When he lost James Kirk he had expected the grief to pass with time. To his distress it did not. Every passing year found it just as sharp and fresh as in those first few months, after Chekhov had called and told him that the Captain was gone and that, this time, he was not coming back.  
He controlled his grief by a prolonged regimen of meditation, which he kept up and increased until this day. Many years later he even entered into another bond, a relationship that was surprisingly pleasant and might have been fulfilling if it had not been for the ragged remnants of another, stronger bond in his mind.  
She was human, just like Jim, and she has been gone for a long time, just as so many others.  
Possibly, he would have been fine, eventually, if not, decades later, a starship captain named Jean-Luc Picard had called. He still remembers that call as if it was the end of everything, a strange sort of Apocalypse that burned his whole being to ashes and revealed to him that he had underestimated his beloved Captain after all. Because he had come back, against all odds - only to be gone again. For good this time, Picard assured him, as Chekhov did so many years ago. Apparently Picard saw him die - and who is Spock to argue with the Captain of the Enterprise? He does not know if he believes Picard, he does not calculate the odds of his Captain defying death one more time or ten more times. All he knows is that time and the universe have been working against them. And he accepts, finally and irrevocably that he will never see his captain again. This acceptance is what finally breaks him and for decades afterwards his life is nothing more than a haze and shadows. They say he shouldn't grief like this. That it is not healthy and not natural - but he does.  
Kai'idth.  
Whatever he is today was rebuilt from all the pieces he shattered into when he lost his captain. He has been rebuilt but he will never be whole again. And he will always hurt.  
Of course, that was in another life and in another time altogether.  
In the meantime he has seen his planet die. 6 billion of his people have been lost. And he has met another James Kirk, one younger than the one he has known and more broken. He has met another version of himself, more rigidly disciplined, more troubled by deep emotions, more rebellious than he, himself, has ever been.  
Entropy has wrought a devastating effect on the past, changing things in ways that are hard to comprehend.  
Paradoxically, meeting Jim's younger counterpart has not improved things. On the contrary, the ragged pieces of the bond that once had been connected to what was dearest to him seem to have been reawakened. They hurt, every minute of every day, seeking for a fulfilment that can never be. 

The red sun of this new world, that they call New Vulcan has gone down and the evening sky is painted in a display of colours, unlike anything that Spock has ever seen. The heat of the day is muted to a pleasant coolness and all Spock can think about is, how much Jim would like the work of rebuilding something, of experiencing the heat of the day and the cool of the night. How much he would enjoy to be together.  
The work on the colony is fulfilling and he is pouring all his energy, all the enthusiasm that he can muster into this endeavor. It is something worth doing, something he can do. But when he comes home in the evening, to a quiet house on a quiet street in a small town that the survivors have named Shi’kahr, he is tired – so tired.  
He walks up the few steps to the small house, built of a native kind of granite. The evening is quiet. He savours the light breeze blowing in from the distant sea across the desert. A fragrant bush beside the door envelops him with its smell. It is a most beautiful place that the Vulcan survivors have found.  
He freshens up, eats a light meal and then kneels on his meditation mat until late in the evening. After a few hours his knees start to hurt but he wills away the pain. Before he is through he has a thrumming headache, the severed bond throbbing in the same rhythm as his heartbeat. The headaches have come and gone on a regular basis since he was thrown into the past. Today it is so incapacitating that he has to interrupt the meditation. He feels nauseous. He slowly leans forward, resting his face in his hands. Tears are pressing behind his eyelids but he won't let them come. He never cried for his captain, he is not about to start now.  
'Jim,' he thinks, 'Jim.'  
When he comes home, late the next evening, a K'normian arms dealer is waiting on his doorstep.

Admiral James T. Kirk never thought it would be this complicated to find his way back to the only place he really wants to be. In fact, he is currently only going through the motions - out of pure stubbornness he thinks. He has no real hope but still he refuses to give in. He can't give in, not until he has irrefutable proof that the universe indeed has played a bad joke on him by having the Nexus dump him in the wrong time and in the wrong place. A time and place that has Spock in it - only, as Jim has discovered, he is not the right one. He is fully prepared to disassemble this universe, and any other he finds himself in, to find Spock, his Spock. Only he is not sure, this time, that he can do it. Hell, he doesn't even know if his Spock is still there, anywhere. He might have been gone for a long time, his body broken into atoms, his katra scattered into the solar wind of 40 Eridani.  
Jim doesn't especially like the universe that he has been thrown into. The first inkling he got that something was wrong, was after the Nexus dropped him off, quiet unceremoniously, in a valley nestled in the Kowah'hla mountain ranges of K'normia. Jim had been here before on shore leave, about 10 years before he ever met Spock, so he recognized the place instantly. He even knew that a 5 minute walk right around the bend in that road would take him into a quaint but good sized little town called T'hanory, which had all modern amenities that one could wish for. Very soon he discovered that his fear that he had been in the Nexus for far longer than he thought (years instead of months) was absolutely unfounded. He had arrived in T'hanory in the past, right around the time of his original shore leave. This was the second blow. The first one came when he realized that the K'normians looked nothing like he remembered them. Gone were the large foreheads. They looked, actually, exactly like Humans. It was then that Jim realized that the traitorous Nexus had not simply dropped him off in the past but in another timeline, another universe altogether.  
With the skills that Jim possesses it is not hard to put some semblance of a life together. It helps, too, that he is from the future. He is soon recognized as something of a genius with an eerie knack of predicting things. He digs deep into this timeline and recognizes that although most of the changes that have been wrought clearly stem from the actions of one Romulan madman, the changes, in fact go far deeper than that. The whole of K'normian physical evolution over millions of years has changed. There are other things, too. He wishes Spock were here to help him put this riddle together.  
Since he now knows that this timeline's Spock is not his, he sets out to find all the other S'chn T'gai Spocks this universe holds. This is, unsurprisingly, easy. There are no others. He then decides to look up all Spocks. Spock was a not uncommon name on Vulcan. Of, course, Vulcan has been destroyed and there are now only six of them left. Jim already found the other five, spread throughout the Alpha Quadrant. Not one of them was very helpful. Not one of them was half Vulcan, half Human either. His last hope is the Ambassador, who resides on New Vulcan. It is a hope Jim counts as slim, but he will take his chances.  
When he sees the old Vulcan approach in the encroaching shadows of a stunningly beautiful New Vulcan evening his heart sinks. He has traveled the Galaxy with a vengeance for the past year, yearning for his Spock with a deep ache and yet again, and for the final time, this is not him. First of all, this Vulcan is old. Much older than his Spock could be.  
Jim rises from the doorstep that he was sitting on. The Vulcan stops, looks up, and falters. Jim can't see his eyes in the dusk. He removes what goes for a hat among K'normian arms dealers, the faint light of two of New Vulcan's moons in his hair, waiting for the Vulcan to come closer. He might as well talk to him.  
The Vulcan reaches out with one hand as if looking for support. Then his knees buckle.  
Jim jumps forward with an agility that belies his own age. He puts his arms around the Vulcan to keep him from falling and the weight of the other's body brings him to his knees.  
This, of course, is when he finally gets a good look at the Vulcan's eyes and he feels twin jolts of terror and recognition go through him. This is Spock. His Spock. But he is not at all as he remembers him. Gone is the calm demeanor and the quiet humor. Gone is the joyful affection in his eyes. It is the face of a man who has lived too long and experienced too much pain, his face deeply lined.  
"How dare you?" Spock says, anger evident in his voice, "How dare you assume his form and come here to mock me? Who are you?"  
It is a valid presumption Jim realizes. They have met enough impostors, shape shifters, mirror universe counterparts, clones and semi-omnipotent beings who can do almost anything, to last them several lifetimes.  
Spock, who moments before was brought to his knees, rises like a much younger man and basically yanks Jim to his feet, the grip around Jim's upper arms strong enough, angry enough, to leave bruises. He drags him up the stairs and with a voice-command unlocks the door. Moments later they are inside and Spock, without preamble, pushes Jim against the wall and presses his fingers into his face, into his meld points. Were this anyone else, Jim would have struggled. He would have fought the abruptness and the intrusion. But this is Spock. And the mind that brutally slams into his is welcome, like a caress and a blessing. He does not resist. Their minds slide together, Jim's human mind adjusting effortlessly to the stronger, superior mind of the Vulcan. And what he feels in that moment is pure joy. It is a homecoming. The presence of his beloved, this one being that he belongs to, body, soul, self and whatever else there is, filling his mind, filling a terrible void he had not quite realized existed.  
"T'hy'la," a voice cries out in his mind, in agony, “T’hy’la.”  
Jim realizes that Spock thinks he somehow hurt him, and sure enough, Spock’s mind retreats, mental fingers sliding over Jim’s mind with panicked urgency, to check for injury.  
Jim holds him, draws his mind closer, deeper.  
“It is me, Spock, me,” his mind whispers, “You are not hurting me.”  
Arms are gripping him, crushing him and he crushes right back as if their bodies somehow could merge. A wave of love, of complete disbelief, of gratitude for all the forces in the universe that make this possible washes over him. And then they lose track of time.  
\--  
If Vulcan’s could coo this would be it. Jim is awakened by hands stroking his face, an old voice murmuring endearments, soothing away the bruises that were left on Jim’s face after the mind meld. Jim is in a state of complete bliss. A happiness so encompassing he did not think it possible. A look at Spock’s face makes it clear that he feels the same way. But there are more complex, conflicting emotions. He can still not believe that Jim is really here. That this is not some sort of deception.  
Jim clears his voice.  
“How long has it really been, Spock?” he asks.  
Spock sighs.  
“Almost a hundred years,” he says, his voice breaking on the last word.  
Jim draws him close and holds him while Spock’s body shakes. He has never seen a Vulcan cry. He didn’t know they could. But then, after all, Spock is partly human.  
\--  
Spock has finished recounting, in a rather fond voice, how Jim’s counterpart emotionally compromised this universe’s Spock and saved earth in the process. Jim feels rather sorry for the other Spock, having lost so much and tells Spock, but Spock, the Elder snorts.  
“He had no business being Captain of the Enterprise,” he says.  
Jim can’t agree.  
“I always thought you would make a fine captain,” he says, defending the honour of all the S’chn T’gai Spocks in all the universes.  
Spock just takes his hands and holds it between both of his.  
“I look forward to meeting our counterparts,” Jim says.  
Spock startles a bit.  
“I forgot,” he says. A quite dramatic admission from someone like him but then, there is good reason to consider him ‘emotionally compromised’ at the moment.  
“They are not around at the moment. I received a communication from Lieutenant Uhura about a week ago. It seems Jim was trapped in an alternate Universe and Spock elected to stay with him. Uhura considered them lost. She was crying.” He frowns in puzzlement.  
“Come to think of it several of the other crewmembers called me, too. They seemed quite concerned.”  
“You, of course told them…”  
“I, of course, told them that there was no reason to worry and that Jim and Spock would find a way out of that predicament shortly.”  
In fact, Spock had lectured them quite sternly on their lack of faith in the Captain and the First Officer of the Enterprise.  
“I just wonder,” he continues, “what is taking them so long?”  
“We could always go and get them.”  
Spock squeezes his hand.  
“They are good kids,” he says, “You will see.”  
\--  
“I do think the Nexus got tired of me,” Jim says. “I sure know I got tired of the Nexus. Especially after Picard let me die and I found myself back there. It was anticlimactic.”  
He has finished telling Spock about everything that happened since the morning they parted before the launching of the Enterprise B. Time didn’t apply in the Nexus. It was quite a pleasant place. And really, the only problem that Jim had with it was that Spock was not there. Sure, there had been versions of him, shadows, but not this Spock. Not the one who fills his soul with his presence.  
“You realize,” his Spock says, “That considering my age and your age we have approximately the same lifespan left.”  
His thumb rubs slow circles into Jim’s hand.  
“Your katra was lost to me. I did not have the comfort of other Vulcans whose loved one’s katras will stay close, even after death. You were just gone.”  
He takes a deep breath.  
“Now, when we die, our katras will merge. I will never be without you again. No one will be able to separate us.”  
This time it is Jim who cries, with relief, in the lengthening shadows of a cool New Vulcan evening.


End file.
